Saturday, March 01, 2008

If It Had Been Up To Me To Stop The Anti-Monitor, We'd All Be Screwed

As I mentioned Wednesday, the latest Heroclix set, Crisis, was released, to much eager consumer response. Today was the start of the Crisis event, which is going to run for about the next 3 months. If my performance today is any indication of how it's going to go for me, it'll be a long 3 months, but at least it'll give me something to post about. We only had four players, so everybody got to play each other. I probably didn't help myself by just picking figures I liked, without giving much consideration to how they might work together, but it's a sealed event, so you aren't sure what you've got to work with until you open the boosters. I ran with Uncle Sam, Red Arrow, and Nightwing.

Round 1 found me up against a team of Batgirl, Jack and Ten, Rip Hunter, The Accomplished Perfect Physician (damn Morrison and his long character names!), and Dolphin and Earth-2 Lois Lane pogs. Rip Hunter proved to be the main problem here, as any time he forced me to reroll my attacks, I missed. And when that wasn't screwing me over, his and the Perfect Physician's Super Senses defense powers were making me miss. Sam did manage to wipe out Jack and Ten with one five damage punch, and Red Arrow shot down the Physician and the Dolphin pog, but was basically struggling to survive Rip and Batgirl's assault when time expired. Nightwing had little success at anything. Final score, a loss on points, 219 to 127.

I pretty much knew I was screwed before Round 2 even began. For one, I've never beaten the player I was up against. Secondly, he had pulled the absolute beast that is Kingdom Come Superman, and paired him with Kid Flash and the Congo Bill/Congorilla pog. Not having any better strategy, I sent Sam and Nightwing across to try and battle Supes, figuring Sam had high enough damage to actually hurt him, and Nightwing had Incapacitate, so maybe that could stop his attacking. He sent Kid Flash over to keep Red Arrow busy while Superman went to work. Nightwing knocked out Congo Bill, and Uncle Sam somehow survived Superman swinging two objects at him (keep in mind, Supes has a 12 attack, I had a 17 defense. He only had to roll a 5 with two die and he would have probably killed Uncle Sam). Meanwhile Kid Flash hit Red Arrow once, but Roy was able to kick young Wally in the face on three consecutive attacks, and knock him out. Of course, Superman had smacked Sam 2/3 of the way down his dial by then, and Sam chose to run, mostly just to bring Superman in range of Roy's attacks. It even worked for a moment. Roy hit Superman, actually did 2 damage, then got hit with a hot dog cart for 7 damage and died. Sam and Nightwing got knocked out soon after. But hey, at least I hurt the old bastard. Final score, loss by knockout out (all 292 points of my team, versus 60 of his).

So I lost Round 1 by not being able to hit, Round 2 by overwhelming power, and so Round 3 completed the trifecta. My opponent hadn't been able to hit successfully hardly at all in his first two matches (in fact, scored no hits against the Superman/Kid Flash team). So naturally he couldn't miss against me, and Uncle Sam continued be mostly ineffectual as an actual attacker. The turning point was probably when my opponent pushed three members of his team (the Wolfman/Perez Wonder Girl, Ace, and Hawk and Dove) to swing their objects at my team, and all of them hit. Nightwing died, and Red Arrow got knocked off his best clicks. At that point it was 2 against five, and like I said, my heaviest hitter didn't feel like hitting, so I was screwed. My entire team got wasted, and I didn't knock any of his figures out.

I was really hoping to have better results for my first Heroclix results post, but it wasn't to be. Demoralizing, is what it is.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rip Hunter is a student of every martial art known to man from the dawn of time. You never had a chance.

Man, Rip Hunter was awesome in Booster Gold 1-6. Also kind of a massive jerk.

Jason said...

Did you cry, or crap your pants when he pulled the Kingdom Come Supes? I don't even play Heroclix and I realize that dude's a killer. Have they produced an Earth-2 Superman that features throwing your entire planet into the sun as an attack? They should

SallyP said...

I don't have the foggiest idea of what you are doing, but it sounds as though you are having fun, and I suppose that's the goal here.

CalvinPitt said...

bret: That may be true, but his Heroclix doesn't reflect the martial arts skill. Of course, it didn't need to.

jason: An E-2 Superman was released in this set, and while he is a monster, we would have been better off if that's what he had pulled. E-2 Supes is 317 points, so he couldn't have been played in the 300 point game. As for me, I didn't really do either. Like I said, I've never beaten the guy, so the fact I was sorely outclassed didn't really change my expectations for the game.

sallyp:It is indeed fun. Of course, it's more fun to win, but I suppose that would have been dangerous amounts of fun.

LEN! said...

From the way you describe what happened in the tournament, it sounds like super strength was a thorn in your side. Were you able to get use out of Nightwing counting as an Outsider on his first few clicks? Arsenal's a badass, he just needs to get his shots lined up in order to really work out.

Matthew said...

I keep buying these even though I have no-one to play with! Basically I collect to get the characters I like, so this week was a great haul - half the Metal Men, a couple of Titans and a dead Flash!

CalvinPitt said...

len!: Not really. Nobody was doing any value modifying, so the Outsiders ability didn't come into play. And Arsenal was definitely a good piece. I think he did more damage than the other two put together.

matthew: That's basically what I try and do, get the characters I like, then try and build a team around them. If they'd make a Hank Pym (as opposed to Ant-Man, Yellow jacket, etc.), I could finally complete my Engelhart West Coast Avengers team.